Ask HN: Who Is Retiring?
After (many) years of work, I've decided to take a break. Maybe for a year. Maybe indefinitely.
Has anyone else here pursued FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)?
Any tips, tricks, or warnings?
Has anyone else here pursued FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)?
Any tips, tricks, or warnings?
In what way is not retiring (let’s assume with decent savings, your typical 25X yearly expenses including typical ACA premium and deductible) significantly lowering the chances that a serious illness will cause bankruptcy, enough that it will make it worth to continue working? Isn’t the probability more or less the same in either case?
Clearly one cannot just save their way into self-insuring, as it’s trivial to imagine medical bills in the many millions of dollars if your insurance starts denying expensive treatments that you do need, wiping out everyone without a $50M+ net worth. Hell I had a routine 1h colonoscopy a while ago and it was a $20k bill (of which I “just” paid $4k out of pocket while the insurance paid $16k, “lucky” me), can’t imagine what an expensive surgery would cost if insurance denies it, there’s really no amount of savings that can shield you from such risk.
Is the thinking that for as long as a person is covered by an employer plan they will get better coverage than what’s available on the exchange, therefore it’s better to just never retire? This also doesn’t seem too logical.
Or is the thinking that by continuing to work one can mitigate the scenario where the insurances constantly nickle and dime you for some non-black-swan medications/procedures, causing one’s healthcare costs to inflate way above the stated maximum out of pockets, but in a way that can still be somewhat offset by the additional income? This is probably more plausible as I read stories of people taking medications that improve their quality of life at the cost of $2k+ per month, which they fully pay because the insurance decided not to cover those. Those can definitely put a dent in one’s planned budget.
I seem to have answered myself after all…
I think core of retiring early basically means I have financial safety to last me at least my lifetime. yet, health-related expenses weight heavily in that decision - do you really have enough?
Is the thinking that for as long as a person is covered by an employer plan they will get better coverage than what’s available on the exchange, therefore it’s better to just never retire? This also doesn’t seem too logical.
THIS is hardly ever talked about - I could not agree more. I think it is psychological thing where if you are still working the money keeps coming in and as long as you do you may not run out… or course as you so eloquently put it - it is very ilogical
Why, if your savings are enough? You can buy insurance. Healthcare.gov is cheap if you don't have income, and there are tricks to be self-employed as well to do normal insurance.
to
* Health care costs will prevent me from retiring anytime soon, even if my savings are enough.*
was basically saying there is no health insurance in USA. getting it from healthcare.gov as you suggested or elsewhere - it is all garbage and people with all that insurance end up bankrupt. hence, saying you can’t retire because of health cost is THE number reason I hear people fear retiring
The thing is, I don't mind working per se, and the social, teamwork, learning/challenge aspects can be nice. I just don't need all the BigCo corporate bs, politics, agile, performance review, 80 hr week stuff. It's a pity there doesn't seem to be any such thing as a chill job with chill people any more.
For a lot of people, not having to work would cause them to become much more curious, with a lot more going on too. I wouldn’t link work, especially modern office work, to those other qualities.
My dad is retired and is the happiest he has ever been. He had a very interesting working career, built several small businesses in his life, but retirement gave him a completely new joy and purpose. He routinely states how retirement is simply amazing, starting from the silly ability to stay up late at night and sleep in every morning (for him late night means 11pm, and sleeping in is 7am, lol).
My tricks will be:
- Living modestly. I never spent more than $50-60k a year in my life even while living in Silicon Valley and traveling internationally a few times a year. I plan to keep it that way, it will probably go up a little bit if I have to pay for my own healthcare on the exchange.
- Traveling extensively but to cheap destinations and off season.
- I am also a dual citizen US/EU so if the US healthcare situation becomes too wild (e.g. ACA gets repealed) I can get universal healthcare in my home country, which is “free” (in quote because in order to get into the healthcare system there I would need to become a resident, which comes with a substantially higher tax on dividend/capital gains than US, but that’s still an infinitely better deal than the US healthcare situation).